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By Joe Jenkins:

I was driving home from my thankless job today when the smell of fresh cut grass filled my car. The only thought that filled my head was: “Man, it sure smells like football.” You know…before the pads start to smell like road kill and chicken soup. Then, unfortunately, that sure smells like football.

Either way, it got me to thinking, it’s only mid-August and we’re already nipples deep in position battles, player analysis, and season prognostications. There’s plenty of time for this. We need more fun. We need more nonsense. We need to field an all movie UB team! Wait… So I’m the only guy that thinks we need to recruit a squad of movie Bulls?

Really?

Wow…

At any rate, it’s already done. So here’s the very simple rules I adhered to: 1) No real football players playing fake football players. That would be called an All-Pro NFL team. 2) No fake actors playing real football players. Neither are pure movie football players and therefore can’t be movie Bulls. 3) Skill positions only. No disrespect to the big guys in the trenches, but even I can only drum up so many ways to call a fat guy athletic with great footwork. I’m not sure what that exact number of ways is, but I can promise it is less than five.

So without further delay, I present the starting offense for the movie Bulls. Let the debate begin…

QB

Paul Blake (Scott Bakula – Necessary Roughness): There are a lot of directions one could’ve gone when naming the ultimate movie Quarterback. Between old Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds—NOT Adam Sandler), Joe Kane, and many others, the decision was hard. Ultimately, we were lucky enough to get the painfully geriatric Paul Blake to sign a letter of intent. Yeah sure he’s old enough to make James Van Der Beek actually like he belongs in college. But at the end of the day, dude’s got a Howitzer for an arm and if you give the old fella a little time, he can air one out to Guam.  He’s not afraid of bar fights, he knows how to hold a team together, and the constant fear of on-field cardiac arrest makes the games that much more entertaining! Downside: Blake apparently has this creepy friend “Al” that likes to pop up and bounce him around to different points in time, never really allowing Blake to come home. Though Blake has promised this will not interfere with game days, this could pose a problem with class attendance and eligibility.  We’ll take our chances.

RB

Darnell Jefferson (Omar Epps – The Program): Do I really have to explain this one? Really??!!  I watched this guy in his last season, and he couldn’t have gotten tackled more than two or three times. Total! This guy only fumbled once—in practice—and after getting yelled at by his coach, never did it again. Of course, if my coach looked that much like Sonny Corleone, I would probably do what he said, too. Either way, he’s clearly coachable. He’s knee injury free which gives him durability that you can’t get from your off the shelf Boobie Miles or Wendell Brown.  On top of all this, he’s smart; I have it on good authority that he hopes to one day become a doctor that diagnoses all sorts of crazy diseases that nobody else can figure out. Did I mention that this guy has Barry Sanders on Astroturf moves? Or that he could pick up center field duties for the baseball team in the offseason? Do I really need to keep explaining? Can I please stop asking questions to people that can’t possibly answer me??!! (Side note: Yes, I know Boobie Miles is a real person. Yes, I know his real life knee injury was both tragic and upsetting. I submit that the Friday Night Lights movie took enough creative liberties that we can draw a clear and distinct line between real life Boobie and movie Boobie. Am I just writing this so I can keep writing Boobie? You’ll never really know…Boobie.)

Megget (Nelly – The Longest Yard): I have no reason to like this guy. I really don’t. He’s from St. Louis. Which means he’s a Cardinals fan. Which instantly put’s him very high up on my personal “poop” list. He was found to be hanging out with Pac-Man Jones in the infamous “strip club video”; Oh, and did I mention that he’s in freaking jail??!! That’s right. He’s incarcerated. Great start. Let’s just say the kid doesn’t know how to sell himself all that well…Yet despite all of this, I’m still somehow borderline man crush/bromance with Megget. So much so I’ve taken him over any cinematic fullback out there and decided to go with a two tailback system. Megget displays Darnell Jefferson-like speed and shiftiness, and does it all in bare feet. Put a set of spikes on the guy and it’s entirely possible that he could kill somebody! Ahem…Kill somebody! What? Still too soon for a jailbird joke?  Thankfully, the powers that be at UB were able to pull some strings and work out a deal not entirely unlike the deal that Warden Norton had at Shawshank. Megget and his sweet moves are on “work release” to us for the next four years. Any slip ups and its back to the slammer for one of our feature backs. Downside: Strong possibility of singing about how “It must be the money” in front of reporters may cause investigations into the program. Likewise, singing about how “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes” in the locker room may not work wonders for team chemistry. Again, my hetero-man love for ankle breaking cuts and jukes make my man worth the risk.

WR

Jimmy Sanderson – (Bill Bellamy – Any Given Sunday): Sanderson thinks that he’s the best wide receiver on the planet—which he just might be seeing as he excelled with a quarterback with the nickname like Steamin’. Last I checked Steamin’ is reserved for less than savory bowel movements. Example: “Dude, what did you eat? That thing is Steamin!”  He’s also one of the few wide outs in football movies that never has to contend with the drops. Sanderson displays adequate speed, decent route running and plays very well in slow-motion. It’s for these reasons that old Jimmy Sanderson clocks in as the number one wide out for the movie Bulls. On top of all this, Sanderson is pretty handy with the jokes, and if all else fails, word on the street is he’s pretty handy with introducing videos on MTV…you know…back when MTV had videos. Downside: High risk of “Downtown” Julie Brown sightings at games; Might still hang out with Eric Nies; Thinks he’s just a little funnier than he really is. Just the same, good hands, good route-running, and the ability to overcome a quarterback nicknamed after stinky beer poop wins out.

Charlie Tweeder – (Scott Caan – Varsity Blues): You don’t mess with Texas, and you don’t mess with a wide receiver that will steal a cop car naked. Charlie Tweeder is both. Tweeder is straight out of the Ricky Proehl mold—a solid possession receiver that has a knack for getting open when you need him most. He was doing Brett Hamlin before Brett Hamlin was doing Brett Hamlin.  Tweeder comes from good stock with his father being Darnell Jefferson’s old coach. Really, the only thing that old Charlie Corleone needs is a few semesters in the Daryl Dawkins School of naming sports moves. That “Tweeder’s new touchdown dance” stuff may fly in high school, but in college a little display of artistic license is not only welcome, it’s required. Downside: You will find him crawling out of bars on Chippewa Street; Robbing Vegas casinos could be viewed as “unconventional” fundraising.  

Coming Soon: The Movie Bulls on Defense…

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